"Yes, Dinny, I don't mind for a change; but it's piracy, and I hope as we sha'n't all be hung." "The same to you," said Dinny, giving the sailor's shoulder a sounding slap. "Piracy!" said Jack, softly, as the boat glided on. "Well, it was not our choice, and, at all events, we're free." CHAPTER SIXTEEN. AFTER A LAPSE. "Then we'll die for it, Bart," said Jack, fiercely. "If so be as you says die for it now, or to-morrow, or next day, or next week, die it is, my lad," said Bart, despondently; "but luck's agen us, and we're beat. Why not give up?" "Give up?" cried Jack, whose appearance was somewhat altered by his two years of hard sea-life in the tropics since the night when the cutter sailed away into the darkness of what seemed to be their future. "Give up?" "Yes; and back out of it all. Why not take passage somewhere, not as Jack, Commodore Junk's brother, but as bonny Mary Dell o' Devonshire, going back home along o' Bart Wrigley, as is Bartholomew by rights?" "Well?" said Jack, sternly. "Don't look black at me, my lad. I'm tired o' boarding ships and sending people adrift." "Growing afraid, Bart?" "Yes, my lad; but not for Bart Wrigley. For someone else." "You are preaching to-night, Bart." "Maybe, my lad, for it's solemn times; and something keeps a-saying to me: `Don't run no more risks! There's old Devon a-waiting for you, and there's the old cottage and the bay, and you've got the money to buy a decent lugger, and there's plenty o' fish in the sea.'" "Go, on," said Jack, mockingly. "Ay, lad, I will," said Bart. "And you might settle down there, and live happy with a man there to wait on you and be your sarvent--ay, your dog if you liked; and some day, if you thought better of it, and was ready to say, `Bart, my lad, you've been a true chap to me, and I know as you've loved me ever since you was a boy, so now I'll be your wife,' why, then--" Bart stopped with his lips apart, gazing wonderingly at the angry countenance before him. "You madman! What are you saying?" was hissed into his ears. "Mary Dell died when she left her home, driven away by man's tyranny--when she sought out her brother and his friend, to find them working like slaves in that plantation. It was John Dell who became your companion: Mary Dell's dead." "No," said Bart, speaking softly and with a homely pathos, full of a poetical sentiment that could not have been expected from his rough exterior as he sat on the deck of a long, low, heavily-sparred schooner. "No, my lad, Mary Dell isn't dead. She's hidden here in my breast, where I can look inwards and see the bonny lass with the dark eyes and long black hair as I knowed I loved as soon as I knowed what love meant, and as long as I've that lass will never die."